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Friday, 15 April 2016

There have been a couple of posts between my review of
Maylis de Kerangal’s “Mend The Living” (translated by Jessica Moore) and this
look at Kenzaburō Ōe’s “Death by Water”, however I did read these books
back-to-back. Moving from the stilted, awkward style of the French novel to the
smooth, eloquence associated with J-Lit. I can assure you the stark contrast
was startling.

The title “Death by Water” is taken from a phrase for
drowning used by T.S. Eliot in the poem “The Waste Land”

Our novel focuses on the ageing famous writer, Kogito Choko
(Kenzaburō Ōe), and opens with his return to the family home, ten years after
his mother’s death, at his sister’s request. This reconciliation of family now
gives Choko the, long deferred, opportunity to finish his novel that is about
his father’s drowning death. As we explore more of this time it is also a
reflection by Choko on his family relationships, his childhood memories and his
imaginary friend Kogii. When our narrator returns home he meets up with a
theatre troupe, the Caveman Group, who is planning to adapt all of his writings
for the stage, a devise for the author to discuss his previous works with the
theatre group whilst researching his “drowning novel”. The reflection on other
works by Ōe are interspersed with interviews with Choko and (of course) the
author’s internal musings.

One of the key prompts for Choko’s upcoming novel,
apparently his last, is a family heirloom, a “red trunk”, hopefully it contains
his family’s history, letters, feedback on his first draft of the ‘drowning man’
novel that he sent to his estranged (now dead) mother and further riches.

When Kogito Choko opens the red trunk his first discovery is
three volumes of the English book “The Golden Bough”…later we learn “the myth
of the Forest King of Nemi is one of the underlying themes of the whole ‘Golden
Bough’, from beginning to end. The archetypal myth about the new king who kills
his aged predecessor, thus engendering a renascence of fertility in the world.”
Is this a reference to post-war Japan and the rule of Emperor Hirohito? Is this
a reference to the passing on of the patriarchal role from Choko senior to
Choko junior? Are these anthropological and folkloric principles a metaphor for
modern Japanese politics? You’ll have to read this book yourself to find out….

However I jump ahead of myself, very early on in the novel do
we learn of our narrator’s (and writer’s) fate, when he states: “what if the
novelist himself ended up being sucked into the whirlpool in a single gulp when
he was finished telling his story?”

As the inner sleeve explains this is “an interweaving of
myth, history and autobiography…a shimmering masterpiece. Reportedly the last
novel that Kenzaburō Ōe will ever write, this is an exhilarating ending for the
great literary character of Kogito Choko and a deeply personal denouement for
one of the world’s most important and influential living authors.”

There are many many layers to this work however for this
exercise of reviewing the work I will primarily focus on the character of
Kogito Choko as a mirror for Kenzaburō Ōe. For example when reflecting upon a
theatrical representation of his work “The Day Himself Shall Wipe My Tears Away”
(written in 1972, published in English in the collection “Teach Us to Outgrow
Our Madness”) which features Johann Sebastian Bach’s Cantata ‘Ich will den Kreuzstab gerne tragen, BWV 56’,
Choko’s sister says

“It’s just that you’re about to
embark on what (considering your age) may well turn out to be your final
project. I realize your main focus will be on exploring the contents of the red
leather trunk, with the help of the Caveman Group, but I can’t help wondering
what might happen if some echoes of the ultranationalist German song were to
show up in the book you ultimately write.”

This is a subtle, understated novel, blending repetitive
tales of Choko’s memories or current day actions with folklore, local spirits,
samurai, female warriors and references to Kenzaburō Ōe’s other writings or
even Natsume Soseki’s “Kokoro”. A ‘letter” in Chapter six, part 5, is very
pertinent; although talking about the novel “Kokoro” the reflection of the book
we are now reading is almost mirror like, “writing a sort of regretful
retrospective was apparently his only means of talking about his own conduct
after decades of silence.” Kenzaburō Ōe’s “The Changeling” appearing in 2000
(nine years before “Suishi”, this work, appeared in Japan).

The literary references are so rich I can’t help but quote
these wonderful passages;

“In your work to date, you’ve
portrayed Father as a grotesquely exaggerated character, almost a cartoon –
sometimes ludicrous, sometimes tragic, sometimes a bit heroic – but really,
your take on him has been all over the map. In other words, for you, there was
no clarity so there can be no absolution or closure, either.”

Therefore, as you are reading this “fiction” the revelations
as to an unreliable narrator, the knowledge that you will have no closure is
slowly appearing, as a reader you are complicit in the novelist’s journey.

“In my novels, I usually portray
characters who exist in very private worlds, but even so, my ultimate goal is
to somehow express the spirit of the era I’m writing about. I’m not claiming
there’s any special merit in my approach – and, as you’ve so kindly pointed
out, my readership has nearly dried up as a result. This may seem like a
stretch, but if I should die I can’t help thinking that it would almost be as
if I were committing junshi myself:
following my own era (and the principles I’ve fought for) into death. I’m
speaking metaphorically of course.”

Like a number of Japanese novels I have read, the
melancholic, meditative, almost Buddhist contemplation, is prominent in both
the style and the content. “Although at the same time they saw something
interesting in the slightly retro, nostalgic feeling that infuses so much of
his work – what you might call a divergence from the now.”

One of the other prominent characters is Uniako, a
thirty-something, determined actress, part of the Caveman Group, she has her
own distinctive style which includes a ‘dog-tossing’ model, in the Prologue we
are introduced to Rabelais and his work Pantagruel,
a tale about rabid dogs. Yes, don’t let any reference, however small, slip
through, it may pop up later, however you never know it could be a “McGuffin”
(see Enrique Vila-Matas’ “The Illogic of Kassel” if you’d like more on
McGuffins).

Is this work a Japanese Karl-Ove Knausgaard? Is Knausgaard’s
“My Struggle” a Norwegian Kenzaburō Ōe? Am I now just being ridiculous? Maybe I
should leave the final word to the author!

“For Mr. Choko, this, probably is
a “serious novel,” both in terms of structure and literary style. However, the
thing is, over the past ten or fifteen years all of Mr. Choko’s long works of
fiction have more or less been cut from the same cloth, most notably in terms
of the protagonist (who is often the first-person narrator as well). Not to put
too fine a point on it, but the author’s alter ego is nearly always the main
character in his books. At some point, doesn’t it become overkill? I mean, can
these serial slices of thinly veiled memoir really be considered genuine
novels? Generally speaking, books like this will never win over the people who
want to read a novel that’s actually novelistic:
that is, an imaginative work of fiction. So at the risk of seeming rude, I
really have to ask: Why do you choose to write about such a solipsistic and narrowly
circumscribed world?”

So “generally speaking” this style of novel hasn’t won over
the judges of the Man Booker International Prize – it not making the shortlist
was one of the personal shocks to myself. I may be more inclined to enjoy
Japanese novels than the general public, I may also be more inclined towards
the male centred, solipsistic, paternalistic works, the first-person ramblings.
With that in mind, take my recommendation with a grain of salt, but this is one
of the better works on the longlist of thirteen, a subtle work, that creeps
into your consciousness, a meditative repetitive piece that works simply as a
tale of writer’s block, but also as an allegory for post-war Japan, also as a
mystery of a drowning death, also as a cryptic tale of youthful folklore spirits
speaking through mature adults, a novel that is both shallow and deep that the
same time, a bit like a deep forest (you’ll have to read it to know what that
means).